In One US County Technology Rules

In Bucks County Philadelphia, they had at one time completely banned the issue of cell phones during school hours on campus. Cell phones were starting to interrupt the classrooms and teachers were tired of seeing them out in class, the more popular cell phones got, the more parents realized the safety benefits a cell phone could have. With safety in mind parents were buying cell phones for their kids younger and younger, but the problem is, were they monitoring these devices? Cell phones started to become and issue in class, students were taking their phones out to show them off to their friends, their friends were calling them during class and disrupting the teachers lesson, usually created a giggle in the classroom depending on the students ringtone.

Students started getting smarter and putting their phones on vibrate or silent while in the classroom, but when texting started to get more and more popular, students began to text each other during class and lectures instead of the old way of passing notes. This made it harder for teachers to regulate the distractions in the class because it was much harder to see a text sent through cyber space than a bright white note being passed back and forth during class. So the schools decided to ban the use of cell phones entirely and then take their phones away to have their parents pick it up at a later date. Not only did this create more problems that it solved, but parents weird getting frustrated having to go into schools to get back what they considered to be a safety device for their child.

In the event of an emergency a cell phone can be extremely beneficial and potentially life saving. Parents don’t realize that their cellular companies offer a plan that lets the parents control every aspect of the cell phone, they can set the phone to not be able to text during certain times of the day, such as school hours or after nine pm, they can do the same with phone calls, but what’s great is that they cans et exceptions to these rules, like that they can still be in contact via text or call with their parents, grandparents or whomever the parents trust and law enforcement. They can set limits to the number of minutes they can use and the number of text messages they can use. This information isn’t widely shared in the media so that’s why not a lot of people know about it.

Now the schools are starting to make a reform they are now allowing cell phones to be used on campus but only between classes or on lunch or snack breaks. The schools realized they were spending too much time confiscating the devices for it actually to be benefit. In this age where technology has so many benefits and cell phones are becoming to popular it just makes sense to lighten the bans on these potentially life saving devices.

Patricia Hawke is a staff writer for Schools K-12, providing free, in-depth reports on all U.S. public and private K-12 schools. For more information please visit Bucks County School Ratings and Public Schools